Megablitz Bastogne

 I know I promised to post about this game a while ago but I had some computer problems. I played this game a while back. We had 4 players, 3 German and 1 American. Unfortunately, I was so busy both playing and teaching the game, all the players were new, that I didn't take any pictures of the game itself. Luckily, my friend Mike Baker had me covered. 

The German Forces. From left to right, we have the Panzer Lehr division, 26th Volksgrenadier division, and the my 12th panzer division standing in for the 2nd panzer division. 

The American forces. In the center is the 101st airborne. Just below them is some of the attached units. At the bottom left is CCR of the 10th armored division. 

The battlefield with Bastogne in the center 

The US units deployed around Bastogne. 

Me commanding the Veteran 2nd Panzer and Mark playing the commander of Panzer Lehr. While Mark's forces got bottled up at Wiltz due to the heavy woods and nearby river; I was starting to bypass the defenses at the North. You can also see the 26th VG moving up the road to Wiltz. This was just before they made a right turn and moved through the woods towards Bastogne. 

The fighting near Wiltz. The US player had aggressively pushed out CCR 10th to attack the German Panzers. This would defiantly cost him later. 

Game day 2, Bastogne finds itself surrounded on almost all side. We ended up calling it for the Germans. There was only a single regiment and some support units in Bastogne. CCR had pretty much been destroyed, meaning no mobile reserves to come to Bastogne's aid. The US had managed to inflect some causalities on Panzer Lehr and wiped out a regiment of the 26th when it decided to attack.

Over all it was a fun and successful game. While my new player made a few errors as they were still in a bit of a tactical mindset. Mark had put his recon stands at the back of his column and it took him a while to take advantage of his mobility. The American player for his part was a bit too lop sided with his defense, allowing me to get around it. Still they all did very well. 

Making a Megablitz Battlefield

 Hello all. Last week I took part in Tanksgiving, my friend's, Mike, Thanksgiving game day event. I decided to run a Megablitz game of Bastogne. Since I'm planning to run this game at a convention later. I decided to make a specialized game board for it. This was the first time I've tried such a thing. 

A Map of the battlefield based on John Tiller's "Bulge 44" game. 

I started by gluing foam core elevations to a 2" thick piece of insolation foam. BTW each square is 6". I play Megablitz with 6mm or 3mm minis so I usually don't need a large table top.

Next I used some spackle to smooth out the hills and started carving in some rivers. 

Next I painted the whole thing white and painted in the road network as well as some gray squares for the urban areas. I added sand and rocks to the river beds and painted them gray. I then added water effects and green foliage clusters. I patted down the clusters with white paint on a sponge. Below is the final result

The battle field on game day, with Bastogne in the middle. The whole thing fits in the back seat of my car. 

A closeup of Bastogne. The buildings are Pico 2mm.

A closeup of the village of Wiltz. This was the location of a large German bottleneck.

The map is still a work in progress. I want to paint the sides so they're not pink, as well as add more water effects to the rivers. Next post I'll go over the game itself. 

Napoleonic Russians

Another thing I finished in the past weeks were my 20mm Russians. I now have two regiments. 

1st Regiment Line. You can tell the regiment by the color of the shoulder straps, while the balls on top of the hats tell the battalion. (White for 1st Battalion and Red for the 3rd Battalion).

The 2nd Line Regiment with the white shoulder straps.

The two regiments in line (each one short a stand)

I'll need another 2 regiments to make a whole division. I'll then maybe add same Grenadiers and Cavalry. 

 

INJ TAMA part 5

 Been a while since I posted anything due to computer problems. A few weeks ago I finally finished my Japanese light cruiser model. Here's the picture. 

I got some other stuff done too and I hope to post again tonight. 

Now I'm Printing with Resin!

 A couple of months ago I got a new resin 3-D printer. I decided to go with a resin printer because their better suited for small miniatures. 

My Anycubic printer with the wash station next to it, well worth the money. 

After a few small projects I went ahead printed my first full unit. Some Russians to take on Christian's French.

These STLs were by Earsling on Thingiverse. They're a little simplistic but the STLs were the right price free. The image above was actually from the first print run, which was unsuccessful. There were too many supports and they were two thick. I broke the miniatures while trying to remove the supports. The second batch below was much better. 

The Troops fresh off the printer.

From this angle you can see the lighter supports.

The troops with the supports removed and cured. Just have to do a little fine trimming and they'll be ready for paint. 

My first Regiment. Just need 3 or 4 others, some cavalry, artillery, and Generals and I'll be coming for ya Christian. 

IJN TIMA Part 4

 I'm back everyone. Had a little sign in trouble with the Blog post. But now, I've got it working again. If some of you remember a couple of years back I started on this model.

I made some good progress on it but then other projects started taking priority and I never got back to it. Well in the past few weeks I decided to go ahead and finish it. Here she is almost done. 

Now I just have to do some touch-ups and maybe some weathering and a diorama base. On the wargaming front, I've got some new mini's on the way and some surprises. I hoping to do some Megablitz soon, as well as tryout some new rules this summer.